Playwright Terrence McNally To Receive Westport Tribute

Tyne Daly, Richard Thomas To Host Event

July 24, 2012|By FRANK RIZZO, rizzo@courant.com, Hartford Courant

Tony and Emmy Award-winning playwright Terrence McNally will be honored at “The Full McNally: A Celebration of the Writing and Works of Terrence McNally,” presented by Westport Country Playhouse at the theater’s annual fundraising gala on the evening of Monday, Sept. 24.

Hosting the tribute will be actors Tyne Daly and Richard Thomas, who have appeared in McNally plays; Daly in “Master Class” and Thomas in “Unusual Acts of Devotion” and “The Stendhal Syndrome.” Proceeds will benefit Westport Country Playhouse.

Directing the 2012 gala production is Josh Rhodes (the film version of “Company,” “Broadway Bares,” “Sondheim: The Birthday Concert”); and music director is Mary-Mitchell Campbell (Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations for “Company”; “The Addams Family”; “Sweeney Todd”; “Next to Normal”).

A cocktail party will begin at 5:45 p.m., followed at 7 p.m. by performances by "Broadway friends of the Playhouse." Dinner with the evening’s stars will be at 8:30 p.m. A silent auction will be on-going throughout the evening. Attire is festive; black tie optional.

McNally was awarded the Dramatists Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011. He is the winner of Tony Awards for his plays “Love! Valour! Compassion!” and “Master Class,” and his books for the musicals “Ragtime”and “Kiss of the Spiderwoman.”

His other plays include “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune”; “Lips Together, Teeth Apart”(produced at Westport Country Playhouse in 2011);“Corpus Christi;” “A Perfect Ganesh”; “The Ritz”; “It’s Only a Play”; “Some Men”; “Golden Age”; “Deuce”; “The Lisbon Traviata”; “Bad Habits”; “The Stendhal Syndrome”; “Dedication or The Stuff of Dreams”; “Next”; “Unusual Acts of Devotion”; “Sweet Eros”; “Witness”; “Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?”; and his first play, “And Things that Go Bump in the Night.”

McNally has written the books for the musicals “The Full Monty,” “A Man of No Importance,” “The Visit,”and “The Rink.”

He won an Emmy Award for Best Drama with his teleplay “Andre’s Mother,” and he wrote the screenplays for “Frankie and Johnny,” “Love! Valour! Compassion!,”and “The Ritz.”

Among his many awards are a Citation from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New Play, four Drama Desk Awards, three Hull-Warriner Best Play Awards from the Dramatists Guild, two Obies, two Lortel Awards, and two Guggenheim Fellowships.